


It Takes a (Secretly Superpowered) Village

by phoenixyfriend



Category: Marvel (Comics), Voltron: Legendary Defender, Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: (so many cameos), Autistic Keith (Voltron), Bombs, F/M, Gay Keith (Voltron), Gen, Genderfluid Loki (Marvel), Knives, M/M, Martial Arts, Marvel Cameos, Trans Female Pidge | Katie Holt, Trans Lance (Voltron), crossovers, questionable parenting, trans Kate Bishop
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2017-09-24
Packaged: 2019-01-04 18:46:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12174552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixyfriend/pseuds/phoenixyfriend
Summary: Before Keith joined the Garrison, he spent two and a half years living with the foster parents he considered his favorites. They were weird, sure, but they were good people who did their best to raise him and teach him how to take care of himself. Keith had almost nothing but good, if strange, memories of that home.Fast-forward a few years, and Keith was fighting a war against aliens in space, and had been for over six months by the time he glanced back at Pidge and her computer mid-battle and saw a wide spread of wanted posters for the people that had the highest bounties in the entire Galra Empire. Pidge had wanted to see if the Galra had figured out what any of them looked like, other than Shiro. Completely by accident, she had found out something else entirely."Keith? What's wrong?""Can you... translate the name on that poster? The one with the the white-haired guy that looks mostly human?""Uh... Noh-Varr. Says he's... Kree. Why?""That's myfoster dad."----In which Keith spends two and a half years living with a secret agent and an intergalactically-wanted alien, and doesn't realize something is off until he gets to space and sees the wanted posters.





	It Takes a (Secretly Superpowered) Village

**Author's Note:**

> This is not canon 616 or MCU Marvel. The universe that I've spliced into Voltron here is about three steps more subtle than pre-Iron Man MCU and about sixteen steps more subtle than 616. Superpowers are almost all entirely secret, and most people who have them, alien ancestry, or extreme training are either working for the government or at least stay in contact enough to say "hi, I'm keeping to myself, don't worry about me," and so on. (There are exceptions, the most prominent of which is Daredevil, but even he doesn't quite ping on the radar since his activities can be explained away as training.)  
> This will change eventually in-universe, but hasn't yet. I've also modified a few ages to keep some of the younger characters closer in age to Keith (mostly Gabby).
> 
> You don't NEED to know the Marvel stuff for this to make sense, but it'll probably be more enjoyable if you do. I'll explain references from outside of Young Avengers at the bottom.
> 
> A few times, you'll see people saying 'ne.' This'll be explained in-text towards the end of the chapter. It's not a weeb thing.
> 
> Looking at it from an outside perspective, any kid raised by Marvel characters is going to have an... interesting childhood.

Keith was nine years old when his dad went missing.

He spent the next five and a half years in and out of group and foster homes. The longest lasting of these homes was the last one he was in prior to applying, and getting accepted, to the Garrison at age fourteen. It was, by many measures, also the best home, and Keith had more than once secretly hoped to actually be adopted by the couple in question, even if they were only fourteen years older than him instead of something a little more reasonable. They hadn’t, in the end, and Keith had shared an awkward goodbye when he left for the Garrison and passed fully into government custody again. Of the many foster and group homes he’d been in, this was the first he felt truly torn about leaving.

“Keep in touch, kid,” Kate had said, giving him a hug before he walked through the doors of the Garrison. “And don’t be afraid to ask us for help if you need it.”

“Yeah,” Keith had answered. “Okay.”

o.o.o.o.o

Keith hadn’t asked them for help when he dropped out.

A year and a half later, as he stared at a wanted poster he’d never expected to see, he looked back on that moment and realized that he really, _really_ should have.

o.o.o.o.o

“Where the crap did you learn to fly like that?” Lance demanded when Keith’s hoverbike finally came to a stop by the shack. He looked furious, and not too concerned with Hunk and Pidge trying to figure out how to get Shiro down behind him.

“Jealous?” Keith asked.

“Does the word ‘reckless’ exist in your vocabulary?” Lance asked. “I’m serious, does it? Because if not, then you should know that that _cliff dive_ was the _textbook definition of it_.”

“We survived,” Keith dismissed.

“ _Barely_ ,” Lance protested. “Shiro was being held up by Pidge, who’s barely five feet tall and doesn’t exactly have a lot of muscle. If Pidge lost his grip on the way down, do you really think an unconscious guy like Shiro would have made that fall? Keep in mind that of the five of us, you were the _only_ person with something solid to hold onto. The rest of us were clinging by the tips of our fingers.”

He was up in Keith’s face by this point, poking him in the chest.

He also… wasn’t exactly wrong.

“…my foster mom,” Keith finally said. “She learned stunt driving at some point, and taught me while I was living with her.”

Lance gestured back the way they’d come. “And you knowing how to stunt drive somehow means that it wasn’t ridiculously dangerous to go off a cliff while the vehicle was overloaded, had no seat belts, didn’t ha—”

“I get it!” Keith cut him off. “I messed up, okay, fine. We’re all okay, I’ll try to…”

He trailed off.

“Think before you leap?” Lance prompted. “ _Not_ engage in reckless endangerment?”

“…how do you even know that term?” Keith asked.

“Hey, I may not score as high on paper tests as Hunk and Pidge, but I’m not _dumb_ ,” Lance said, looking affronted. “Plus, one of my sister’s… friends? Sure, friends. One of her friends is a lawyer and he talks about his weirder cases at the house sometimes.”

“You’re not sure if they’re friends?” Keith asked.

“ _They_ aren’t sure if they’re friends,” Lance muttered. “They met in college by getting in a drunk fistfight over World of Warcraft.”

Keith wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “I don’t really know how anyone in my family met.”

“Nobody?”  Lance asked.

Keith cast back in his memory. His dad had always told him he’d explain when Keith was older when the topic of his mom came up, and he hadn’t really known any other relatives; presumably, they’d have taken him in if they existed, but since he’d gotten shuffled straight into the foster system, they probably didn’t. His foster parents either hadn’t lasted long enough for him to ask, or had shared an awkward look and dodged the question in a way so unsubtle that even Keith hadn’t missed it. Beyond that… well, he’d gotten a few really weird stories about how his foster parents had met _their_ friends.

“I think my foster mom met some of her friends when the church caught fire during her sister’s wedding?” He finally offered.

Lance stared at him, then closed his eyes and shook his head. “Right. Whatever. Let’s go see if Shiro’s going to wake up soon, I guess.”

o.o.o.o.o

Keith had walked into his foster parents’ garage a month into his stay, not yet twelve years old, to find that his foster dad was elbow-deep in the engine of his foster mom’s purple convertible.

(They weren’t hurting for money, which was nice in the sense that it at least meant they weren’t fostering just because they needed the cash. They actually wanted to do this.)

“Do I need to check the suspension?” He asked.

“You might need to,” she answered. “I was racing Tommy on a track for practice, but there was a jump, so…”

“Say no more,” Noh answered, standing up and pulling the hood back down. He finally noticed Keith. “Oh, hey, kid. Need something?”

Keith shrugged, not stepping too far away from the door. “There’s nothing to do.”

In previous homes, saying that had either led to chores or an offer of a book or TV time or something. He preferred the books, but even chores were better than nothing, once in a while. He figured this home would probably lean towards an actual suggestion of entertainment, but he’d be okay with sweeping or doing dishes if it came down to it. That was generally how it went in the poorer households, at least; if the dishes needed to be done anyway, then it was just as well to hand them off to whoever wasn’t busy with something important.

“Know anything about cars?” Noh asked.

Keith shook his head.

“Would you like to?”

Keith blinked, and looked at Kate. “Um.”

“I’ve got to go dig Clint out of a dumpster or something,” she said wryly, wiggling her phone. “Might be the tracksuits again.”

Whatever that meant.

“See ya later, kiddo,” she said, ruffling Keith’s hair and moving towards the other car in the garage, which was big and black and probably some kind of SUV. Keith, at age eleven, didn’t know enough about cars to bother caring about brands or models. She called over as the garage opened and she slid into the driver’s seat, just before the door closed. “See ya, Space Boy!”

Noh waved as she left, not bothering to answer when she couldn’t hear him through the closed door.

He turned back to Keith, grabbing a heavy-looking wrench and spinning it through his fingers in a way that looked kind of dangerous. “So, want to learn some basic maintenance before I work on the suspension system?”

Keith nodded. It wasn’t what he was expecting, but he could probably get out of it pretty easily at this house if he ended up not liking it.

o.o.o.o.o

“Will it scar?” Keith asked, sitting in front of the medbay pods with Hunk.

Coran looked over from the datapad he was looking at. “The pods should heal the worst of it, but it might not get everything.”

“He won’t like that,” Hunk muttered. “He’s really proud of his skin.”

“The pods mean he’ll get most of that back, though,” Keith pointed out. “It could be a lot worse.”

“You’ve seen worse scars?” Hunk asked. “I mean, other than Shiro’s, I guess.”

“Yeah, my foster mom had this friend that came over sometimes, Wade… Wilson, I think? He was kind of weird, but nice.” Keith shrugged. “I never asked what happened, but most of his body was covered in some really nasty scars that looked like they were probably burns. He kept most of it covered when he left the house. And they, my foster parents, sometimes got a friend of theirs, Nico, to babysit, and she had a prosthetic like Shiro’s, but it was removable and she showed me the scars on the stump once. Um… my foster dad was friends with a guy called Matt Murdock who had some _really_ bad chemical burn scars over his eyes. I was kind of rude the first time we met, ‘cause I was twelve and kept asking about his blindness.”

“What I’m getting from this is that your foster parents knew a lot of people with really bad injuries,” Hunk said, staring in something approaching consternation.

“I think the Murdock guy helped Noh with some issue when he was trying to get citizenship or something? And they met Nico when they were teenagers, so that was probably high school. Um… I think Kate met Wade through Clint, and I still don’t know how Kate and Clint met.” Keith turned to look at Lance again, feeling Hunk shift next to him. “I didn’t really ask most of the time, just guessed based on stuff they said.”

“Did you have any friends while you were there?” Hunk asked.

“Uh… yeah,” Keith answered, making a face. He had, actually, and good ones at that, but… he wasn’t really ready to talk about them. Hunk was a nice dude and all, but that didn’t mean Keith wanted to tell him _everything_. “Not at school, though. I’m not good at people. It was the best foster home I went through after my dad disappeared, but that didn’t really make school much easier. Kate and Noh were willing to argue with the administration about bullies, or about the teachers making adjustments for my autism, but it’s not like anyone could _force_ the other kids to be friends with me, right?”

“I guess,” Hunk said. He shifted over enough to bump his shoulder against Keith’s, grinning when their eyes met. “But you’ve got us, now, right? We wouldn’t be able to form a giant robot with our minds meshed together unless we were friends.”

Keith glanced up at Lance again, and then hunkered down, hiding the smile on his face. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.”

o.o.o.o.o

Keith came out to breakfast one morning to the sight of two extra people in the dining room.

“—really prefer to get that x-rayed,” Noh was saying. Kate’s voice came from further on, indistinct. He continued, “There’s a good chance it’s broken.”

 “I’ll be fine,” the pale woman in the chair said, watching as Noh wrapped a bandage around her forearm. “Right as rain. I’m Asgardian, or… well, close enough to count.”

“Loki…” a redhead in glasses said. Keith could see green tattoos crawling their way up her arms from where he stood, though the way she leaned against the counter hid most of her body.

“C’mon, would I lie to you?” Presumably-Loki said, turning and smiling at the woman. She winced after a second, shifting the frozen pack of peas against her cheekbone. “Ow.”

“Are you sure we shouldn’t call Strange? You know Billy can get you an appointment pretty fast.”

“I promise that if it’s broken, I don’t need Stephen’s help,” Loki said. “I just need a little time, and a chance to punch Sigurd’s perfect little nose off.”

“Not Lorelei’s?” Verity asked.

“Lorelei’s at least up-front about being a criminal. Sigurd’s a hypocrite,” Loki said. “Besides, all Lorelei did was pickpocket me. Sigurd was the one who decided to get into a full brawl.”

“And how much did you have to do with how the brawl started?” Noh asked.

“You wound me.”

“I’ve known you since you were four feet tall, Loki. Try again.”

Loki sighed dramatically. “It involved a sword and some _very_ old friends that Sigurd once wronged.”

“That much is true,” Verity confirmed.

“And why were you there?” Noh asked.

“Lorelei’s got good taste in wine,” Verity said, shrugging. “And hey, someone’s got to keep an eye on this little god of bad decisions.”

“God of _Stories_ , Ver, and I’m like a foot taller than you,” Loki said.

“Shorter than the rest of your family, on all sides,” Verity retorted.

“You guys _suck_ ,” Loki whined.

Keith knocked on the doorway.

“Oh!” Noh said, standing up and turning towards him. He set the bandages back down on the table. “Keith, you’re awake. Are you hungry?”

“Uh, yeah. I mean, I don’t have school today, but, uh, who…” Keith’s eyes darted between the strangers. “I mean, I heard their names, but…”

“This is Loki, and that’s Verity,” Noh said. “Friends of mine and Kate’s. We’ve known Loki for a fairly long time now.”

“I was terrible practice, really,” Loki sighed, which… didn’t make much sense.

Keith blinked at her, and then turned to Noh.

“We were never legally Loki’s guardians, but we were the older friends with an extra bed when things got… troublesome,” Noh explained delicately. “I’m going to go make breakfast, since I got waylaid with… this.”

“I’ve got some deep-seated issues with my parents that meant I sometimes just had to get out and _stay away_ for a while,” Loki said as Noh left the room, her tone almost conversational. “It’s been easier since I found work and got my own place.”

Keith wasn’t sure how to approach that. “So… what do you do?”

“Hm?”

“For work?” Keith prompted.

Loki grinned and got to her feet, sweeping in to a deep bow. “I am Loki, God of Stories, acting teacher, Agent of SHIELD, and Gossip Girl.”

“…what?”

Loki laughed at that. “I work law enforcement with Noh and Kate as my day job, teach acting classes on the weekends, and write a gossip column in my free time.”

“Oh,” Keith said. “Uh, okay, then. And… Verity?”

“Yeah,” Verity said, understanding that the question was that he wasn’t sure he’d gotten her name right. “And I do freelance data analysis from home.”

“We’re roomies,” Loki said cheerfully, slinging her free arm around Verity’s shoulders.

“Yeah, well,” Kate came into the room. “I just got off the phone with your third ‘roomie.’ Guess who’s going to go see Dr. Foley in a few hours?”

“You told David?” Loki yelped.

“Who’s David?” Keith asked, looking at Verity. He’d heard the name around the apartment before, of course, but it was a pretty common name.

“Loki’s boyfriend,” Verity told him. “ _David’s_ college roommate, Josh Foley, became a doctor very young, so I’m not surprised David got Loki an appointment with him for today.”

“You’ve got a few hours,” Kate told Loki. “Call your boyfriend, Loki. I may not be in charge of you anymore, but keep your loved ones in the loop; you remember that rule, right? One of the ones that you only break when absolutely necessary?”

Loki looked down at the table. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Ugh, don’t call me that,” Kate said, making a face. “It makes me feel old.”

“You _are_ old.”

“Says the—says you.” Kate stumbled over her words. Keith looked up from where he’d been tapping on the table and frowned. What had she been going to say?

“So, kid,” Loki said.

“Keith.”

“Keith,” Loki continued smoothly. “You got any plans for today?”

“…no,” Keith said, drawing the word out. Noh-Varr wasn’t even in the room, and he was answering a direct question, so it wasn’t like there would be any confusion anyway. “Why do you wanna know?”

Loki glanced at Kate, raising her eyebrows. “No extracurriculars?”

“We were waiting for him to settle in a bit first,” Kate said.

 Loki blinked. She grinned. “So…”

“If he wants to,” Kate said. She turned to Keith. “You’ve been here for a month and a half. As far as I can tell, you’re reasonably comfortable, so we can probably function as a suitable home for a while. Are there any extracurricular activities you want to start? Loki’s offering you a place in her acting classes, but you can do something else if you want.”

“I don’t…” Keith trailed off, thinking. “I could try it?”

“Anything you were interested in already?” Kate prompted. Behind her, Noh came in with five plates balanced on his arms, passing them out around the table. Verity gave him a quiet thank you, but Loki and Kate were more focused on Keith.

“I want to do martial arts?” Keith said, voice tilting up at the end of the sentence like a question. “And there’s an astronomy club at school. And I want to learn how to ride a hoverbike.”

“You could talk to Jessica,” Noh said, turning to Kate. “We both know how to teach self-defense, but for more structure, she could put us in touch with Colleen again.”

“God, it’s been ages since I talked to her,” Kate mused. “She’s a good teacher though. Astronomy club, that’s school-based, no need for us to get involved. Hoverbike…”

“Kate, ne.”

“I’ll do it,” she said cheerily.

“He’s twelve.”

“So we’ll start small. I’m not going to teach a kid to stunt drive before he can even do a simple circuit, Noh,” she said, waving away the concerns. “You’ll come with, of course. I know you’ve been teaching him how to work with engines, so you can explain how the bike works. And you can play reality check so I don’t go too far, too fast.”

“Really?” Loki snorted. “Noh-Varr? The man who can’t die? You want _him_ as your reality check for what’s too dangerous?”

“I am fully capable of dying,” Noh said, feigning offence. “You’re the immortal, little God of Stories.”

“I’m not _that_ immortal,” Loki scoffed, crossing her arms and turning away.

“You didn’t get mad at him for calling you little,” Verity pointed out.

“That’s because Noh-Varr’s taller than me.”

Kate sat down next to Keith and leaned over to speak without raising her voice too much. “You can tell me if this is taking it too far, but Loki’s worked with kids on the spectrum before. A friend of ours is a therapist, and sometimes when kids want to work through learning how to interact in ways that are more socially acceptable, they get referred to Loki’s classes. It’s a pretty safe environment to work through things with a script and learn how certain emotions are conveyed in real life, so if you’re comfortable with that and want to work on your people skills, I really would suggest it. Don’t feel pressured, but think about it. She definitely does one-on-one sessions too, if you don’t want to do something like that in front of a lot of people.”

“Uh, I don’t know how to feel about that,” Keith said.

“If it helps, she could totally teach you how to grift; god only knows how many times I’ve seen her do it in the years we’ve known each other,” Kate sat back with a little laugh.

“What’s grifting?”

Loki turned towards him with a foxlike grin. “I’m _delighted_ that you asked.”

(Keith wasn’t very good at grifting, it turned out, but the lessons did help him figure out how to interact with the people around him a little more smoothly.)

o.o.o.o.o

Nyma.

Nyma was… worrying.

Keith hadn’t been too interested in being suspicious of a pair of people who just happened to have a damaged ship and a distress signal, thinking that Hunk’s tension was just a general desire to go ahead to the Balmera already.

Then he’d seen the way Nyma was acting around Lance, and something had just… pinged.

She giggled when he tried to make her laugh, and acted coy, and always, always met his eyes.

…always met his eyes.

Oh shit.

 _Soul-gazing_. Meeting the mark’s eyes, continued eye contact no matter what, and in two minutes it can generate feelings of love even between near-total strangers.

There was no _real_ reason to suspect Nyma of being a con artist, but…

Keith watched her. He kept his eyes on her and Lance, trying not to interfere, fingers drumming against his armor where he’d crossed his arms. He kept track of the probably-calculated touches, of the way she only occasionally looked away, of how she kept her body turned just so and—

“Keith?”

A hand landed on his shoulder, and he looked up to see Shiro standing there with concern on his face.

“Uh…”

“You look like you’re trying to set Lance on fire with your brain,” Shiro said, ever so helpful.

“I’m not,” Keith said immediately. “I’m just…”

“Just…” Shiro prompted, when Keith didn’t actually finish his sentence.

“She’s acting like a con artist,” Keith finally said.

Shiro blinked. “Okay… do you actually know what con artists act like or are you just basing this off of movies?”

“Loki,” Keith said. After a moment’s silence from Shiro, he looked up and explained. “One of my foster parents’ friends was an acting teacher who helped me figure out social situations. They used to be a con artist as a teenager. I never got an explanation about why, but… yeah.”

Shiro closed his eyes and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Are you saying you know how to con people?”

“I mean… in theory,” Keith said. He tilted his head, considering. “I’m not actually any good at it, but I know the bits and pieces.”

“Right,” Shiro said flatly. “I keep forgetting how many weird skills you picked up there.”

“It wasn’t that weird.”

“Going by your stories, Keith, it _really_ was.”

Keith just looked at him.

“Go warn Lance,” Shiro sighed. “If both you and Hunk are worried, then I’ll stay on alert.”

“On it,” Keith said, and jogged over to where Lance was flirting his precious little heart out.

“—would love a tour from one of the knights. But I guess the big one is in charge, huh? You have to obey his orders?”

Keith’s gut twisted. Wow, that wasn’t even _subtle_ … and yet Lance was falling for it. Shit.

“Hi, sorry, gotta borrow Lance real quick,” Keith rushed out, grabbing Lance and pulling him away. “Listen—”

“What the _hell_ , dude?” Lance demanded. “What are you doing?”

“Lance—”

“I was just getting somewhere!”

“ _Lance_ , could you _please_ just… not think with your dick for a moment?” Keith begged. “She’s—”

“Are you kidding me?” Lance demanded. “What, are you jealous or something? Besides—”

“—not jealous, I’m gay, but—”

“—can’t think with my dick if I don’t have one, thanks, so—”

“Would you _please listen to me_ ,” Keith hissed, grabbing Lance by the shoulders and leaning in.

Lance stared him down for a moment, and then brought up one hand to press a forefinger to Keith’s nose and push him away.

“First of all,” Lance said. “I’m trans. No dick, so I’m not really gonna think with it, yeah?”

Keith took a slow, deep breath. “It’s a metaphor anyway, so… metaphorical dick. Or just ‘thinking with your libido’ or whatever. Point is—”

“Can we please stop talking about my metaphorical dick so I can get back to flirting with a cute alien girl that’s actually interested in me?” Lance asked.

“She’s _conning you_ ,” Keith hissed, trying to keep his voice low enough that nobody else would hear him.

Lance’s expression flattened. “Are you _seriously_ trying to say that the one time I get someone actually interested in me since coming to space, it’s a con?”

“We haven’t exactly met a lot of people other than the Galra and the Arusians,” Keith pointed out. “So you’ve really only struck out with Allura.”

“That’s not—you know what, never mind,” Lance said, rubbing at his temple. “Okay. Let’s say I believe you. Why are you so convinced she’s conning me?”

“She’s doing a lot of things that I remember Loki teaching me, and—”

“Loki?” Lance asked, eyebrows inching towards his hairline. “As in the Norse god?”

“What? Ne, my foster parents’ friend. They taught me how to… well, how to act neurotypical, I guess. They were an acting teacher, but they were also a con artist as a teen, so…”

“…a friend of the foster parent that taught you how to cliff dive on a hoverbike?” Lance asked slowly, eyebrows furrowing like he had a different question.

“Yeah.”

“…Jesus fucking Christ, Keith,” Lance muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Fine, whatever, you know what you’re talking about. Why would Nyma know how to grift a _human?”_

“Um… some things are universal?” Keith offered, after realizing that yeah, that was a little weird. Sure, Nyma had been _super obvious_ in manipulating Lance just now, but Lance probably wasn’t going to listen to that. “Listen, can you at least be careful? Keep your comms on or whatever? We don’t know what she wants, if she is grifting. O-or I could come with you and—”

“Wow, okay, no,” Lance said, making a face. “No… coming with. I’ll keep the comms on, and you can… I don’t know, be on standby or whatever.”

Keith stared Lance right in the eye, not soul-gazing as Nyma had so much as just trying to wear him down, but gave up. “Fine. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I won’t.”

As it turned out, Lance did do something stupid, enough to have Keith sprinting for Red as soon as he heard Lance agree to fly Nyma out in Blue. He kept the hangar doors open and Red on alert, ready to go as soon as something happened to make him think it might be necessary.

At one point, the raggedy ship the smugglers used lifted up into the air and took off. Not much later, Lance’s helmet stopped broadcasting.  That… couldn’t have been a coincidence.

“Shiro,” Keith said into the comms. “I’m going after them.”

“Why?”

“Call it a gut feeling.”

He got there before they stole Blue. There were perks to piloting the fastest lion, and Keith didn’t even say “I told you so” when he uncuffed Lance. Granted, Hunk later did that himself, to everyone, but still. Keith was getting better at not accidentally picking fights with Lance.

“…thanks,” Lance muttered, rubbing at his wrists as Keith uncuffed him. “Looks like you were right.”

“Maybe don’t brag about being a paladin next time,” Keith suggested. “Don’t give them information that might make them want to use you for something, and you’ll know they actually like you for you.”

“That doesn’t help nearly as much as you think it does…” Lance said, “But I can tell you’re trying, so… thanks.”

Keith smiled at that.

o.o.o.o.o

“You own a magic shop?” Keith asked, dubious to the core.

“Yeah,” the woman said, crossing her arms and raising an eyebrow. “You a skeptic, then?”

“Magic isn’t real,” he said, twelve years old and utterly sure of this fact.

Kate and Noh exchanged a look, and then turned to Nico. Kate spoke first. “You two have fun.”

“Oh, I’m sure we will,” Nico muttered, not looking away from Keith as Kate and Noh left.

They sat like that, him on the couch and her in the armchair, staring.

“What kind of magic?” Keith asked after a period that could have been anywhere from thirty seconds to five minutes. He hadn’t quite been paying attention, too focused on his growing boredom and the woman in front of him.

“All kinds,” she said, and then continued before Keith had a chance to point out how much that _didn’t_ answer his question. “Crystals, tarot, just about anything involving herbs, candles, sigils, the list really does go on.”

Keith made a face. “And this works?”

“Depends on who you ask,” Nico said. “For me? Yeah, it does. Witchcraft goes back forever in my family. Not always used for the best of purposes, mind you, but it’s always been around. I didn’t actually _know_ about it until I was a teenager, since my parents raised me Catholic, but it’s real to me.”

He stared at her a little more. “But you can’t _prove_ it.”

Nico snorted at that. “Sure, kid. Think of it this way; if it _does_ work, then great, and if it _doesn’t_ work, then no harm done, right? If it doesn’t work, at least you had fun trying.”

He could… kind of understand that. “So it’s not just mixing stuff and chanting or whatever? Waving wands and stuff?”

“Sometimes, sure,” Nico said. “More than you’d expect, especially in my family. But a lot of it is more… subtle, especially in the aftereffects.”

Keith stared at her.

“How about I teach you about how crystals work into magic?” Nico offered. “You can decide on your own later if you don’t believe, or if it bores you enough to stop learning, but it doesn’t hurt to listen for a bit, right?”

So Keith learned about crystals. And then tarot. And then herbs.

He never quite believed in it, but Nico was an engaging speaker, and he could listen to her talk for hours. She never spoke that long at one time, of course, but it all added up, given that she was one of his most frequent babysitters. She wasn’t the closest friend his foster parents had, but she was available when the group that Noh and Kate affectionately called their ‘team’ wasn’t.

At least she was interesting to listen to.

o.o.o.o.o

“Huh,” Keith said, looking at the small crystals that grew out of the walls of the Balmera. “I wonder what these are made of.”

“What do you mean?” Pidge asked.

“Uh… chemically, I guess?” Keith shrugged. “Like, it looks quartz, except glowing. Is it made from the same stuff?”

“I don’t think so,” Pidge said. “These are grown through a biological process instead of made through a geological one, you know? So there’s probably a bunch of proteins and stuff in it instead.”

“Ah,” Keith said, eyeing the walls of the Balmera passage.

“Why do you wanna know?” Pidge asked.

“I knew a woman who was really into witchcraft,” Keith said. “She taught me some stuff, even though I don’t really believe in it, and I was wondering how she’d change the spells if she had Balmera crystals instead of just rocks from Earth.”

“Like… neo-paganism?” Pidge asked, wrinkling her nose. “Wicca or whatever?”

“I don’t… really know,” Keith admitted, rubbing the back of his head. “Remembering which rock or card meant what was easy, but I didn’t always get the actual…”

“Faith?” Pidge suggested.

“I guess,” Keith said, shrugging. He looked around the cave again. “So do you think I could grab a few small ones if I asked Shay?”

“Maybe,” Pidge said. “So your foster parents were okay with you just… learning witchy stuff?”

“They were okay with me learning a _lot_ of things,” Keith said.

“Like…” Pidge prompted.

“I mean, Wade taught me how to make bombs,” Keith mused. “Kate yelled at him for that and then told me that if I was already learning how to blow things up, I might as well do it safely.”

“Your foster mom taught you how to make a bomb?” Pidge asked, just a little incredulous.

“She taught me how to make _lots_ of bombs,” Keith corrected. “Or, well, at least two or three. Noh taught me a few others. They probably wouldn’t have, except Wade wasn’t a super safe teacher. I don’t think he felt pain.”

“And Child Services never… caught on?” Pidge asked.

“I mean…” Keith shrugged, a little uncomfortable. “It was the best foster home I’d been in. I don’t know if it was against the rules or whatever, but I didn’t _want_ to leave. It was safe to be autistic and gay and Asian and just… I don’t know. I kept some of their mistakes to myself, they kept me around… it was a good place.”

“Safe to be queer and autistic, huh,” Pidge snorted. “God only knows I wish my elementary school was like that.”

“The school wasn’t,” Keith admitted. “But the house was.”

“Huh,” Pidge said, kicking a loose rock as she stared at the ground. “Think they would have been okay with it if you were trans, not just gay?”

“My foster mom was a trans woman, so…” Keith shrugged. “Yeah.”

Pidge stopped in her tracks, turned to blink at him, opened her mouth to say something, closed it to consider, and then giggled. “I guess ‘Kate’ is just a popular name for us trans girls to pick, huh?”

Keith snorted. “I wouldn’t know.”

“So,” Pidge tossed over her shoulder as she started to walk again. “You mentioned cards. Does this mean you know tarot?”

o.o.o.o.o

Keith watched the door to the apartment closed. Even after several months at Noh and Kate’s, he was still taken aback by the fact that they invited him to join them for dinner when company was over. Granted, this was more ‘childhood friends’ than business partners or something, but still.

“Something wrong, kid?”

Keith blinked and looked away from the door, stepping away from Kate as she reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. She paused, and despite raising an eyebrow, put her hand back down.

“Not… _wrong_ , exactly,” Keith hedged, and then looked at the door again.

Billy, Teddy, Tommy, the names had been.

A married couple, and one’s brother.

A _gay_ married couple, or at least queer enough to be in same-sex relationship.

“What’s up?” Kate asked, sitting on a chair and lacing her fingers together as she leaned forward to rest her elbows on her knees. “C’mon, sit down. Something’s obviously going on, right? Tell me.”

Keith glanced at the couch and then took a seat. He stared at his fingers, fiddling.

“Keith?”

There were noises emanating from the kitchen and dining room as Noh took care of the clean-up.

 “Your friends.”

“Yeah?”

“They’re, um, gay?”

“Billy and Teddy are. Tommy’s bi, though, and isn’t really in a relationship right now.” Kate said. She stared at him unnervingly. “…is this a problem?”

“No. Uh.” Keith took a deep breath. They had friends that were in same-sex marriages. They wouldn’t… they weren’t going to—

“A few of my other foster homes kicked me out for being gay,” Keith finally blurted out.

“Ah,” Kate said. “I see.”

Keith kept staring at his hands, trying to keep them still as he focused on his breathing.

“Well,” Kate finally started talking again. “I can assure you that won’t happen here. Was that worry the reason you didn’t come out earlier, or is it just that the topic never came up?”

“…I like it here,” Keith said. “I didn’t want to—to risk it.”

“But seeing that some of our closest friends are in same-sex relationships changed that?” Kate prompted. She laughed after a moment, a short, soft thing that made Keith finally look up. Kate smiled at him. “Keith, kiddo, Noh and I are both queer. Trust me, nothing to worry about.”

Keith blinked. “…really?”

“He’s bi, I’m aro and trans,” Kate told him. “Being gay is nothing. I mean, it’s something in the sense that it’s a concept, and it’s something in the sense that it has, does, and will continue to affect your life… but it’s not a _problem_ with us. Okay?”

Keith stared at her.

“…I know I pass well, but the staring is really rude,” Kate said. “You’re twelve and don’t have the best grasp on social niceties, so I’ll let it go this time, but trying to see the ‘hints’ that I was born with a different body is kind of… not okay.”

Keith blushed and ducked his head. “Sorry.”

“Just try not to do it again,” Kate said. After a silence so long that it was starting to grow uncomfortable, she said, “I was lucky. I came from a wealthy family, so I had access to the hormones and operations I needed to feel the way I wanted to. My dad started paying for hormones when I was fifteen and surgery when I was eighteen, and then by the time I turned twenty-two… ta-da.”

“Your dad sounds nice,” Keith said.

“Oh no, he wasn’t. He did that because the money wasn’t an issue, the publicity was good, and my mom asked him to before she died,” Kate said, sounding so matter-of-fact that Keith actually looked up to gape at her. She waved a hand dismissively. “He disowned me two years ago after I got him arrested for large-scale money laundering.”

Keith continued gaping.

Noh entered the room, drying his hands. “Room for one more in the conversation?”

“If you want,” Kate said. “But last I checked, all information on _your_ family was locked away behind a court order when you turned eighteen.”

“Along with numerous other files, yes,” Noh said, shaking his head. “My childhood was… full of events that aren’t suitable for anyone’s eyes.”

“And the only reason I already know is that I was there for half of it,” Kate snorted. “Anyway, Keith, do you—”

A phone rang.

Keith’s eyes darted to Noh’s pocket, where the loud, shrill ringing was coming from.

“Who is it?” Kate asked, as Noh dug the phone out.

The man took one look, inhaled sharply, and then got to his feet. “Abigail Brand.”

“Shit.”

“I need to take this,” Noh said, holding the phone up to his ear. He stood up and left the room, just barely audible as he left. “This is Noh-Varr, SWORD ID: 5370616365-20-426F79. What’s the problem?”

Keith turned back to Kate, who shrugged, and then clapped. “Okay, it’s like ten PM and you have school tomorrow. If I’ve taken care of all your concerns, then it’s time for you to go shower and get ready for bed.”

Keith made a face.

o.o.o.o.o

So Allura got captured.

That was.

That was a thing.

Keith paced the halls before they went back in to get her, rubbing at his arms to try and force some feeling into himself. Sure, it had been a little… mean? Rude? Wrong, fine, to suggest they not go in for her. He could understand why the others had freaked out. But Keith was pretty sure that Allura herself would have agreed with him. There was a good chance they’d be delivering Voltron right to Zarkon’s hands, and that couldn’t happen. It just—

He collided with a wall of muscle, and almost fell before large hands reached out to hold onto his shoulders.

“Whoa, hey, slow down.”

Keith blinked, shaken out of his thoughts. “Hunk?”

“You look…” Hunk trailed off, clearly juggling words, before he finally settled on, “tense.”

“I’ll be fine,” Keith muttered, and tried to move around Hunk to get back to walking.

“Is this about earlier?” Hunk asked, falling into step with him, which was at least better than trying to wall him off or whatever.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Keith? C’mon, we’re friends, right? We’re in each other’s head holes all the time, too.” Hunk gently bumped their shoulders together. “You can tell me this stuff.”

“Coran probably hates me right now,” Keith muttered.

“He doesn’t hate you,” Hunk said. “He’s just… worried about Allura.”

“And I said we should leave her.”

“…yeah, he’s probably kinda mad about that,” Hunk admitted. “Or at least, he was? But I’m pretty sure he at least understands why you suggested it.”

“I can’t just… pretend everything is going to be okay,” Keith said, struggling to keep his voice even. “What if we really _are_ just hand-delivering Voltron to Zarkon by trying to rescue Allura? We already know that it’s a trap, but what if we can’t get out of it once it’s triggered?”

“None of us really have the training to make that call,” Hunk admitted. “I mean, I guess Coran might, and Shiro probably does, but they’re both compromised, right? Coran cares too much about Allura and Shiro’s got his guilt stuff going on.”

“There’s more to ambushes, though.”

“I mean, yeah, but—”

“There's a principle of ambushes tactically,” Keith protested, and didn’t even realize when he started rambling, because he _knew_ this. “There are two kinds of ambush, okay, Ambush Close, and Ambush Far. In a Close Ambush, the right thing to do is immediately turn around and engage the enemy. If you can do it without breaking the order of battle and quickly, then you can turn the ambush around and do way more damage to the opponent than they do to you, because you’re basically ‘ambushing the ambush’ or whatever. In a Far Ambush, the enemy is in a difficult to reach or fortified area with a good line of retreat, and the best thing to do is turn immediately the other direction and withdraw, either reducing the impact of the ambush to minimum or forcing the enemy to abandon their advantage to keep the engagement going. And, uh… right, in the heat of the moment, it’s usually hard to tell which situation you’re in, but the fact is that making the _wrong_ choice quickly, is better than making the right choice slowly. Decisiveness makes the difference more so than anything else, and—”

“Breathe!” Hunk cut in, putting a hand on Keith’s shoulder. “That’s impressive and all, but _breathe_. That was like listening to Lance talk Shakespeare. Where did you learn all of that?”

“What?” Keith blinked, staring at Hunk. After a moment, the words processed, and he frowned. “My foster parents did some law-enforcement type stuff. I think Noh was former military, and I don’t really know what Kate did, but they taught me stuff like that. I’m… better at remembering the theory of it than actually putting it into practice.”

“Can I ask _why_ they taught you that?” Hunk asked.

Keith shrugged. “It was just stuff they talked about when I asked. We’d be watching a war movie, or someone would be teaching me some forms with my knife, and it was just… something to talk about.”

“Your foster parents taught you how to knife fight?” Hunk asked, like he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted his question clarified.

“Well, yeah,” Keith said. “They didn’t want me accidentally hurting myself, right? If I was going to carry it around anyway, then I might as well know how to use it without slicing myself open in the process.”

“The more I hear about your foster parents, the more I question everything about you,” Hunk muttered. “Did you have friends there, at least? Your own age?”

“Yeah,” Keith said, almost surprising himself with how much brighter his voice sounded. “I actually kept in contact with a few of them after I left for the Garrison, and even after I dropped out.”

“What were they like?” Hunk asked.

 _Oh,_ Keith realized. _He’s trying to distract me_.

…he could work with that.

“Well, there was Gabby. She sparred with me a lot, especially when her older sister babysat me, but she had some medical condition where she couldn’t feel pain, so we had to be careful about it. There’s a name for it, congenital an… well, something. She was a year and a half older than me, and we watched horror movies and stuff together. She was… probably my best friend other than Shiro. Mel-Varr was actually Noh’s cousin or something. They never really explained how they were related, but he came around to stay every few months, and he was…”

“Yeah?” Hunk prompted.

“Insufferable,” Keith finally decided on. “Really full of himself and with a massive ego about his own intelligence, which was hilarious because he had a crush on this girl called Lunella that was in his class that was a lot smarter than him, and she didn’t give him the time of day unless he dropped the crush and just talked science with her. And then there was Ellie Camacho, Wade’s daughter, who was probably as normal as any of the people I met got.”

“Wade?”

“No, Ellie. Wade was massively scarred and taught me how to make bombs,” Keith waved the question off. “I don’t know what he did for a living, but I think it was probably illegal.”

“…and now we’re back to the weird stories about your life before the Garrison,” Hunk said. “Did anyone _else_ teach you dangerous things like… all of the knife and bomb stuff?”

o.o.o.o.o

“—hook the fingers like this and make a scooping motion, you can pop out your assailant’s eyeball,” Natasha instructed. Keith nodded, wide-eyed and watching, while Clint wheezed.

“Can I get up now?”

“I suppose,” Natasha said, getting up and helping the man to his feet. “Ready to give it a shot, kid?”

Keith bit his lip, eyeing Clint and wondering, just a little, when Kate and Noh would be back.

“Yeah, I think so.”

o.o.o.o.o

“—the difference between a regular virus and a Trojan Horse,” David said. “Granted, both can get you into where you’re going eventually, if there’s an internet connection, but if you _really_ want to hack a place, then what you need is actually a way to access the hardware directly, and for that—”

o.o.o.o.o

“—uncle, uncle!” Keith gasped out, tapping the floor a few times.

“I win!” Gabby chirped, jumping to her feet. “Again!”

“That’s because you’re bigger and older than him,” Laura said, lips pursed into what Keith _thought_ was an amused smile. “And you’ve been doing this longer.”

“I’m getting better,” Keith muttered, rolling his shoulders to distribute some of the pain.

“Wanna go again?” Gabby asked, bouncing on her toes. “We can get my dad to referee this time!”

“Logan’s got things to do,” Laura said flatly. “Which you’d know if you’d paid attention this morning at breakfast.”

“But Jonathan needed a walk!” Gabby protested.

“Why do you have a pet wolverine, again?” Keith asked.

“It’s a family thing,” Laura said, before Gabby could answer. “Now, are you two going to go back to sparring or not?”

o.o.o.o.o

“—granted, it can take _years_ to understand even a fraction of the manner in which certain microbes and bacteria behave, but that’s part of what makes the field of biological warfare so valuable… and why a lot of people consider it a war crime,” Bobbi said, shrugging.

“…I just wanted help with my biology homework, Miss Morse.”

“Yeah, but I feel like getting you interested in the deep and scary stuff about biology means you’ll be more interested in learning the basics. Did it work?”

“Kinda.”

“Then let’s get down to you learning about more than just the mitochondria being the powerhouse of the cell.”

o.o.o.o.o

“—only, like, thirty-five feet up,” Cassie said.

“Your concept of what a dangerous height is doesn’t align with the rest of the world’s,” Kate huffed, angling her fist to jam it into a crevice in the stone. The tape glove she wore protected her skin, but it was still something that looked incredibly uncomfortable. “Keith, how are you doing?”

“…I’m very happy we have safety ropes?” Keith said hesitantly, eyeing his own finger jam.

“Eventually, you won’t need them at all!” Cassie said cheerfully, hanging from her own finger jam, looking completely at ease with the fact that she had less safety gear than any of them.

“…right.”

o.o.o.o.o

“And this is Marcia!”

“ _Wade, stop showing my kid how to load an RPG!”_

“Hawkeye, great to see you! Listen, I’m just showing him so he doesn’t eventually get himself hurt.”

“…at least start with normal guns, dammit, this is _way_ too advanced for a kid with no firearms experience.”

“You mean you haven’t already? For shame, Hawkeye!”

“I do bows and arrows, Wade, not guns.”

Keith kept his hands under the table, exactly where Wade had said to keep them for safety’s sake, and asked. “So why do you own an RPG?”

“It’s a replica!” Wade said. “The real Marcia is elsewhere.”

“Thank God,” Kate muttered.

“But Katie-Kate’s right! Let’s show you how to work a normal gun, first.”

“I’m going to lose my right to foster children because I let you babysit, Wade.”

“Nah, you won’t. The kid loves it here, and that’s all that really matters, right?”

o.o.o.o.o

“Ne,” Noh said. “Nyet. Nein. Nei. Nej. Não. Nahi. Voch. Non. Lo. La. Le. Hapana. Bù. Iie. Khô—”

“I won’t be able to remember all of those,” Keith complained, resting his chin on his crossed arms and slumping forward across the table.

Noh smiled. “You won’t need to. We usually stick to the European ones. Kate uses ‘ne’ since her mother was Serbian, and we use ‘nyet’ pretty often, and most people get ‘nein,’ but the chances of us using anything else is pretty slim. Billy might go with ‘lo,’ and Loki’s might use ‘nei’ since they grew up speaking Norwegian, but for Kate and myself, it’s usually just ne or nyet.”

“Because just saying ‘no’ would be confusing, I know,” Keith grumbled.

“Yes, because my name didn’t come from a culture where English was particularly prevalent,” Noh said, and Keith didn’t even bother asking where Noh was from that time.

(‘Classified’ was something that got a little annoying to hear after a while, but at least they were consistent enough about what they applied it to that Keith didn’t suspect they were just doing it to brush him off.)

o.o.o.o.o

Corrupted wormholes, Keith decided, could go fuck themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kate's reckless stunt driving comes from her activities in Fraction's Hawkeye comics, as do the references to the Tracksuit Draculas. Clint Barton (Hawkeye) is from there.  
> Lance's sister's lawyer friend is an original character. If you've read JaLD, you know who I'm reusing. If you haven't, then don't worry about it. All you need to know is in the text.
> 
> Noh-Varr's pre-YA comics show that he's actually an advanced mechanic, so he's the one that fixes up the cars when Kate Does A Thing.
> 
> Matt Murdock (Daredevil) helped Noh arrange for a SWORD Visa to stay on-planet. Noh's teenage disaster moments (like the Fuck You fires) happened fairly differently, and often not on Earth.
> 
> Verity Willis is from the Loki: Agent of Asgard comics, as are Lorelei and Sigurd. They do not have codenames.  
> Joshua Foley (Elixir) was David's roommate back when he was still a student of the X-Men, before YA. He had healing powers.  
> The whole "acting classes to learn social cues to deal with autism" is based on some personal stuff.
> 
> The soul-gazing is a Leverage reference.  
> (I didn't plan for Lance to be trans, but then Keith said the line about "thinking with your dick" and Lance responded and??? Okay. That's happening in the fic now.)
> 
> Nico Minoru (Sister Grimm) is from Runaways, and I love her.
> 
> Wade Wilson (Deadpool) is from a number of comics, but his major roles in this fic are influenced by his portrayal in Hawkeye vs. Deadpool.
> 
> Kate's issues with her dad's illegal activities are from Fraction's Hawkeye and All-New Hawkeye.
> 
> Abigail Brand (no codename) is the Director of SWORD (Sentient World Observation and Response Department), which is Marvel's extraterrestrial-focused counter-terrorism organization.  
> There's an explanation for why Noh's ID number is so long. It'll pop up later.
> 
> You can thank firebirdeternal (on tumblr) for the dialogue regarding ambushes.  
> Gabby Kinney is from All-New Wolverine, a Laura Kinney-focused comic. She is Laura's clone, but they consider each other sisters.  
> Lunella Lafayette (Moon Girl) and Mel-Varr (Kid Kree) are both from Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. Mel and Noh never actually met in canon, which I feel was a massive waste of potential.  
> Ellie Camacho is Wade Wilson's daughter. She's adorable.
> 
> Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow) is... very well-known. I don't think you need me to tell you who she is.  
> Jonathan is Gabby's canon pet wolverine. He's hilarious.  
> Bobbi Morse (Mockingbird) has her own comic, but is probably best-known for being Clint Barton's (extremely badass) ex-wife.
> 
> 'Noh' and 'No' sound a lot alike, and as someone who occasionally says 'nyet' instead of 'no' just because I can, I'm declaring that at some point people started shifting that one word to a different language when necessary just for clarity's sake. I would. (As for Kate being part Serbian... her background's ambiguous, so I'm going to project like hell.)
> 
> Generally speaking, you can assume that Kate and Noh are doing their best to raise Keith in a way that's good for him and leaves him capable of protecting himself, but have such strange backgrounds themselves that they end up teaching him a LOT of things that most kids... simply Would Not Know. He loves being with them, and they care a lot for him, but god only knows how many people side-eye their parenting style, especially when taking into account all their friends.


End file.
